Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Bedtime Story: The Puzzle

I woke up with my hands smeared in deep red
blood. It was puzzling. I couldn't fathom how it had got there and I had no
remembrance of my prior actions. I was just groggy, feeling dazed as if I had
been drugged. Dizziness, feebleness and lethargy had gripped me.

I pulled off
my quilt and heaved myself up. The bed groaned underneath and I felt a spasm of
pain around my midriff. I felt as if the air had gone out of my lungs. So, I
inhaled hard willing the cold wind around me to gush into my throat. But I still
couldn't breathe. I coughed to clear the air passage. But no sound emanated
from within. I lifted the jug from the side-table and drank deeply. I could
feel the water streaming down my windpipe, traveling down the ribs and into my
belly...and then my stomach appeared to leak, as water drained out of its walls
and into my bloodied hand.

I felt my stomach with my palm, and felt a
dagger entombed in it. I pulled out the blood-stained dagger and let life drain
out of me completely. My soul had been hanging on there, just holding on to the
long-dead body. But now it was liberated. I had finally solved the puzzle, of
how my hands got smeared with blood. It was my own blood, as you must have
realized by now.

I had committed suicide. I had committed
suicide in my sleep. I, for many months, had been a sleep-walker.

it was a good read but i felt the climax was bit upsetting.. perhaps you should have made it a murder. bcos i wonder will they stab themselves to commit suicide? :o uno, that's really hard to even think of... :(

“There's always room for a story that can transport people to another place.” ― J.K. Rowling

About Me

When he realized that he wasn’t made out for a corporate job, Ritesh Agarwal quit CA and took up writing as a full-time profession. He also enjoys teaching, taking amateurish photographs with his over-expensive camera and penning short stories (when he is not procrastinating, that is). Having reviewed dozens of books by dozens of authors, he is hoping that someday somebody would review ‘Lovelets’, the anthology in which he finally got published.
A multi-tasker at heart, he is also planning a career in baby-sitting and story-reading. If you have lots of babies or just wish to indulge in bookish chitchats, you can catch him at Facebook on www.facebook.com/RiteshIsGreatest or toss a friendly email at ritzy182000@gmail.com